Description
The United Nations Headquarters is the complex on the East River, in Manhattan's Midtown, where the General Assembly and the Security Council meet. It is a small piece of the world's diplomacy inside New York: the land is run by the UN alone, under a treaty with the United States.
The buildings define the skyline on the river. The slim glass tower of the Secretariat rises over the low, long block of the council chambers and the curved roof of the General Assembly Building. Its great hall holds 1,800 people, the largest room of the complex, with two murals by Fernand Léger.
The gardens and the sculptures are the part everybody can enjoy. Look for the Knotted Gun, a revolver with its barrel tied in a knot, a gift from Luxembourg; the Japanese Peace Bell, rung at the spring equinox and at the opening of each General Assembly session; and a piece of the Berlin Wall.
Inside, a full-size tapestry copy of Picasso's Guernica hangs at the entrance to the Security Council room, and a Chagall stained glass window, Peace, remembers Dag Hammarskjöld.
Philadelphia, San Francisco, the Black Hills of South Dakota, even an island on the Canadian border: in 1946 they all hoped to become home to the UN. New York won, thanks to a gift and a riverside full of slaughterhouses.
That was Turtle Bay. A developer had planned a futuristic "X City" there, but the money never came. John D. Rockefeller Jr. paid for the land and, in December 1946, gave it to the UN.
There was no competition: the UN called in architects from ten countries, with Wallace Harrison as director. The meetings were stormy. Le Corbusier pushed his own Project 23 and asked the young Oscar Niemeyer not to present one. Niemeyer did in the end, and the final plan blends the two.
The complex was finished in 1952. Léger's two murals got nicknames at once: one is said to look like Bugs Bunny, and President Truman called the other "Scrambled Eggs".
The buildings define the skyline on the river. The slim glass tower of the Secretariat rises over the low, long block of the council chambers and the curved roof of the General Assembly Building. Its great hall holds 1,800 people, the largest room of the complex, with two murals by Fernand Léger.
The gardens and the sculptures are the part everybody can enjoy. Look for the Knotted Gun, a revolver with its barrel tied in a knot, a gift from Luxembourg; the Japanese Peace Bell, rung at the spring equinox and at the opening of each General Assembly session; and a piece of the Berlin Wall.
Inside, a full-size tapestry copy of Picasso's Guernica hangs at the entrance to the Security Council room, and a Chagall stained glass window, Peace, remembers Dag Hammarskjöld.
Philadelphia, San Francisco, the Black Hills of South Dakota, even an island on the Canadian border: in 1946 they all hoped to become home to the UN. New York won, thanks to a gift and a riverside full of slaughterhouses.
That was Turtle Bay. A developer had planned a futuristic "X City" there, but the money never came. John D. Rockefeller Jr. paid for the land and, in December 1946, gave it to the UN.
There was no competition: the UN called in architects from ten countries, with Wallace Harrison as director. The meetings were stormy. Le Corbusier pushed his own Project 23 and asked the young Oscar Niemeyer not to present one. Niemeyer did in the end, and the final plan blends the two.
The complex was finished in 1952. Léger's two murals got nicknames at once: one is said to look like Bugs Bunny, and President Truman called the other "Scrambled Eggs".